They are mainly young men and live in southern states, according to a paper, published in the American Journal of Public Health.

Researchers say these young men tend to have grown up in gun-owning households, are politically conservative (Republican) and own more than one type of firearm. Some of these homes own up to seven different types of weapon.

It comes less than three weeks since gunman killed 56 people and injured more than 500 others in an attack at a Las Vegas music festival.

The massacre was the deadliest in the history of the US, which has the highest rate of murder or manslaughter by firearm in the developed world.

The study, compiled by researchers from the University of Washington School of Public Health, the University of Colorado, the Harvard School of Public Health, and North-eastern University, looked at the handgun-carrying behaviour of 1,444 gun owners using data from a 2015 national survey.

Two-thirds of them said they carried their handguns concealed, while 10 percent did so in an open manner.

The research is the first in more than 20 years to scrutinise how and in what manner US adults carry loaded handguns.

Researchers said state laws on handgun carrying have eased since the 1980s and that some respondents to the survey admitted openly carrying a firearm even in regions where it was illegal.

I noticed this proposal on Facebook (for what that’s worth!). It takes the form of a change.org petition by Cody Orlando to be presented to the federal government. I don’t support concealed firearm possession or handgun possession in any form, but I’m interested to know the thoughts of others.

This will be a tough sell as most people have never handled a pistol, don’t understand the safety features, and have been brainwashed by the media and politicians for decades – creating a society that has an irrational fear of firearms. Jeff Cooper coined the term ‘Hoplophobia’ back in 1962, describing it as a “mental disturbance characterised by irrational aversion to weapons”.

I want you to put aside your irrational fear of firearms for a moment while I present you with some facts:

It is not possible to ban guns from a society

Violent crime in Australia is up and comparable in many ways to the United States. The media and our politicians love to hide this fact from you. In Australia, a woman is three times more likely to be raped than in America.

You might say you don’t want an American gun culture. I don’t either and I’m not proposing that. I don’t support the idea of self-regulation and the private sale of firearms and ammunition to anybody and everybody. Background checks, licensing and training are essential for anyone who wishes to use a firearm in Australia.

Because Americans have guns they are more likely to shoot each other. You will often see statistics of gun deaths in America compared with other countries claiming this is the case. What they fail to mention is that most of those deaths are attributed to suicide and because firearms are so readily available, they are the tool of choice for suicide in the US. Suicide is just as concerning in Australia, it’s just that we choose instead to jump at the gap or gas ourselves in the garage. The population of America is 14 times greater than that of Australia, so a per capita comparison is more like 715 America / 60 Australia deaths by firearms. I have included a graph below that shows how much more likely you are to die by other means in the US.

In the last two decades, the UK has introduced the most restrictive gun laws in the developed world, banning many types of firearms. During this time crime has skyrocketed and criminals are the only ones with guns.

As a law abiding Australian citizen who goes to work and pays his taxes, don’t you feel the Government should be doing more to protect you from violent criminals? I’m sure they believe they are doing the best they can, but the problem is their strategy is wrong. Criminals get too much of a free ride these days. Violent offenders brazenly rob, rape and beat people with little fear that a good citizen will step in to put a stop to the attack.

Police cannot be everywhere to protect everyone. There is about one police officer per 500 citizens and each officer works 40 hours during a 24/7, 168 hour week, reducing the ratio to 1:2100. Then you need to factor in how much time they actually spend on the beat, rather than doing paperwork, time in court etc.

Policing is not a proactive business with respect to violent crime. It’s impossible to tell when and where a rapist might attack and potentially give you a nasty disease. There’s not much you can do about that disease after the fact either. You can’t sue AIDS or Hepatitis C in a court of law.

Now I’m not suggesting for a moment that you or your daughter carry a concealed weapon to protect yourselves, but what I am proposing is that those good citizens who are trained and licensed to use pistols should be legally allowed to carry in public in their own personal time.

Why can’t an off-duty police officer choose to carry a pistol when he is doing his grocery shopping, or an armed security guard or sporting pistol shooter for that matter? Approximately 0.5% of Australians are trained and licensed to use pistols. How brazen would a criminal be knowing that 1 in 200 citizens would be only too happy to step in and assist another good citizen like yourself in distress?

You have a choice. You can continue to believe the media, political spin, lies and fear-mongering, or you can choose to believe that authorities recognise they cannot control criminals, so they control the law abiding. Lobby your government to allow licensed people to carry and remind them Article 3 of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person”.

Cardinal Pell is expected to be charged with sexual offences. Photo: AAP

Victoria Police have charged Cardinal George Pell with multiple serious sexual offences and have ordered him to appear in court next month.

Police confirmed Thursday that Australia’s most senior Catholic clergyman in the Vatican was summonsed to face charges over alleged historical child sex offences.

“The charges were today served on Cardinal Pell’s legal representatives in Melbourne and they have been lodged also at the Melbourne Magistrates Court,” Victoria Police Deputy Commissioner Shane Patton told a media conference.

The charges will send shockwaves through the Catholic Church both in Australia and around the world.

Cardinal Pell is the Vatican’s finance chief and considered the third most powerful person in the Catholic Church.

Australia has no extradition treaty with the Vatican, but Cardinal Pell is expected to return to fight the charges.

He previously refused to return to Australia to front the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in 2016, citing illness.

He instead appeared via video link from Rome to refute allegations he helped cover-up abuse by other members of the clergy.

Deputy Commissioner Patton said police received advice from the Department of Public Prosecutions regarding the investigation in May.Three detectives from the Victoria Police Sano Taskforce travelled to Rome to interview Cardinal Pell about the allegations last October.

“Cardinal Pell has been treated the same as anyone else in this investigation,” he said.

“It is important to note that none of the allegations that have been made against Cardinal Pell have been tested in any court yet.

“Cardinal Pell, like any other defendant, has a right to due process and so therefore it is important that the process is allowed to run its natural course.”

The allegations of sexual assault reportedly were made by two men now aged in their 40s, from Cardinal Pell’s home town of Ballarat.

The men said Cardinal Pell, then a parish priest, touched them inappropriately in the summer of 1978-79, when he was playing a throwing game with them at the city’s pool.

The ABC’s 7.30 program aired the details of the sexual abuse allegations against Cardinal Pell last year.

The Cardinal has vehemently denied the allegations, accusing the ABC of mounting a smear campaign against him and saying the broadcaster had “no licence to destroy the reputation of innocent people”.

He again denied any wrongdoing in July upon news he was being investigated

The operator of an airport fire engine that ran a red light and killed three people in a crash has been ordered to pay $160,000 to the Commonwealth for breaching the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

The main argument was that Airservices failed to give appropriate training to its employees and did not identify risks to its employees or other road users.

Justice John Reeves today handed down his judgment finding Airservices breached the act and ordered it to pay the fine.

Justice Reeves noted the “airport fire engine was much larger than the majority of other vehicles driven on public roads, and the potential for serious injury and damage if they come into collision with another vehicle or a pedestrian is obvious”.

The recent arrest of an Australian 60 Minutes TV crew in Lebanon, has had (Australian) media outlets outraged that a TV crew could be arrested for reporting the news.

What they gloss over in their outrage is that the crew were filming a kidnapping and abduction of two children of an Australian woman who was in Beirut with their Lebanese father. True, the father had failed to return the children after an access visit, but still a kidnap and abduction has occurred.

The TV crew was not just there filming the abduction. No, it is alleged that the 60 Minutes producers had actually financed the abduction by hiring a professional company to carry out the grab. it is alleged that AU$115,000 was paid by Channel 9.

That makes the TV crew complicit in the action, and an accessory to kidnapping and abduction, assault and conspiracy, all serious crime in the Lebanon.

The mother and the TV crew could find themselves in detention in Lebanon for some time to come.

If found guilty, they could face up to 20 years in jail.

Dr Denis Muller, a media ethics expert at University of Melbourne, believes Channel 9 did the story because they thought it would “rate its socks off”.

“An Australian mum was rescuing children, bringing them back to a great life in Australia, that’s what it was all about,” he said.

“I can’t imagine Channel 9 looked into the risk and I can’t imagine they would have knowingly put their staff at risk like this”. But it appears they did just that.

However, the reporter at the heart of the issue, Tara Brown, has maintained a level of integrity stating, “I cannot talk, I don’t want to jeopardise anything. It has been fortifying to get messages of support, support from my family, friends and colleagues. I am being treated extremely well and the other women here are incredibly generous and kind.”

Will this action receive unbiased reporting from the Australian media?

Sometimes something that looks legitimate is not always what it seems.

For example, have look at the clip below were UK police pulled over and booked the driver of an ambulance responder unit. The public would have perceived this as an incredulous situation! But, the ambulance turned out to be a bogus unit.

A quick look a the vehicle should have raised suspicion, as the vehicle clearly has no specific ambulance service markings on it, only than the generic word “AMBULANCE” on the front and rear, and the Battenburg pattern hi-viz pattern applied to the exterior of the vehicle, and the blue light bar on the roof.

What the driver of the vehicle expected to achieve by this subterfuge beggars belief! There is no financial reward as a result of this behaviour. Delusions of granduer, perhaps?

However, senior ambulance officers in Britain’s NHS trusts say the ongoing privatisation of ambulance services has meant “sham” crews are able to operate legally. There is nothing illegal in writing “Ambulance” in bold letters across your car or wearing a flashy jumpsuit with “paramedic” emblazoned on it. The use of blue lights and sirens on public roads would constitute an offence.

John Divall, principal training officer of the Royal Berkshire NHS Trust, who has gathered nationwide reports on paramedic impersonators, said: “The NHS Executive Intelligence Unit are aware of this. They’ve been gathering cases of these Walter Mitty people who seem to want to trade on the prestige of real crews. And there is nothing we can do about it.

The other thing of note here is the quiet professional way the police went about their business. No throwing the “offender” against the vehicle, no raised voices, no slamming of doors, no behind-the-back handcuffing. All very quiet and purposeful.

The offender attended caught and was convicted and was fined for his efforts. I am led to believe that he re-offended, and received a prison sentence. He has since been at it again. refer to this article.

A very sad affair, with a man with clear mental health issues. Hopefully whist in prison he may receive treatment for this.

Some of the legal decisions that come out of the USA, never cease to amaze me. Now a US federal court has ruled that it is OK to wear military medals that you did not earn, and to lie about earning those medals. The wearing of an unearned medal, in my opinion, dilutes the intent conveyed by the medal, thus making the public skeptical when accepting the legitimacy of any medal. That said, the sheer number of medals (144 at last count) available to US servicemen and women, for all aspects of service, weapons handling etc., serves to foster that dilution on its own.

Consider this:

A federal law that prohibited people from wearing military medals they didn’t earn is unconstitutional for the same reason as a law that made it a crime to lie about earning a medal, a US federal appeals court ruled on Monday. It’s a falsehood that is protected by freedom of speech.

In an 8-3 ruling, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said the now-repealed law against wearing unearned military decorations was a ban on a type of “symbolic speech.” Although the government can forbid falsehoods that cause tangible harm, like fraud or perjury, the Constitution restricts government regulation of expression based solely on its content, the court said.

“Suppressing a symbolic communication threatens the same First Amendment harm as suppressing a written communication,” Judge Sandra Ikuta said in the majority opinion. “Wearing a medal has no purpose other than to communicate a message.”

She cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in 2012 striking down a related law that prohibited lying about receiving a military honor. That 5-4 decision said the law punished speech without requiring proof of intent to defraud, and that the government had other ways of protecting the public from deception — for example, an easily accessible database of legitimate medal recipients.

A year after that ruling, Congress enacted a revised law that makes it a crime to lie about military honors, but only if the liar intended to profit or defraud someone. The new law does not punish someone solely for wearing an unearned medal.

Dissenters from Monday’s ruling said falsely wearing medals is conduct, not speech, and is potentially more harmful than lying about them.

“The wearing of an unearned medal dilutes the message conveyed by the medal itself,” making the public less likely to accept the legitimacy of any medal, said Judge Jay Bybee, who was joined by Judges N. Randy Smith and Paul Watford. “The lie here is told in a more effective way.”

The ruling came in the case of Elven Swisher, an Idaho man who served in the Marines from 1954 to 1957. In 2001, Swisher filed a claim for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder benefits, saying he had been wounded and traumatized in a secret combat mission in North Korea in 1955, two years after the Korean War ended. He said an unnamed captain had awarded him a Purple Heart and told him he was entitled to other service medals.

After initially rejecting his claim, the government reversed itself and granted Swisher benefits in 2004 for PTSD from the secret mission. The government canceled the benefits in 2006 after concluding that Swisher’s claims about the mission, the harm he suffered and the medals he earned were fraudulent.

In the meantime, Swisher wore his unearned Purple Heart when he testified as a prosecution witness against David Hinkson, convicted in 2005 of plotting to murder three people, including a federal judge. Despite learning of Swisher’s apparent deception, the appeals court later upheld Hinkson’s convictions.

Swisher, who has never recanted his claims, was convicted of the false-medal charge and three other crimes and has served his one-year sentence. His lawyer, Joseph Horras, said Monday’s ruling was a worthwhile expansion of First Amendment protections.

This Is Me

George Brown is a decorated soldier and health professional and 40 year veteran in the field of emergency nursing and paramedical practice, both military and civilian areas. He has senior management positions in the delivery of paramedical services. Opinions expressed in these columns are solely those of the author and should not be construed as being those of any organization to which he may be connected.

He was born in the UK of Scottish ancestry from Aberdeen and a member of the Clan MacDougall. He is a member of the Macedonian community in Newcastle, and speaks fluent Macedonian. While this may seem a contradiction, it is his wife who is Macedonian, and as a result he embraced the Macedonian language and the Orthodox faith.

His interests include aviation and digital photography, and he always enjoys the opportunity to combine the two. Navigate to his Flickr site to see recent additions to his photo library.